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Score One for the Web’s Don Quixote

By John Markoff November 14, 2007 6:58 pmNovember 14, 2007 6:58 pm

Carl Malamud’s quixotic mission to free government information took a step closer to reality on Wednesday morning when he struck a deal with Fastcase to electronically publish a free archive of federal case law.

Mr. Malamud, an Internet radio pioneer who set up public.resource.org in March with the idea of making “public works” accessible via the Internet, wants to force the federal government to make information more widely available.

In August he began using optical scanning technology to copy decisions that have been generally available only on paper in law libraries or via subscription from the Thomson West unit of the Canadian publishing conglomerate Thomson and from LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier, based in London.

The two companies now dominate the $5 billion legal publishing market.

However, Fastcase, a smaller player based in Washington, D.C., decided that Mr. Malamud’s idea had merit. The company has provided him with its database of federal case law from 1950 to the present and the earliest Supreme Court decisions. Fastcase and public.resource.org have placed the archive in the public domain.

The archive includes 1.8 million pages of federal case law. Ed Walters, the chief executive of Fastcase said that the contribution was a way for the company to expand its reach beyond lawyers and make legal information available to the general public.

“I said I would put all federal case law on line and this is a huge chunk,” said Mr. Malamud.

Still missing are the Federal district court filings, but he said that volunteers are now beginning to place current legal decisions online on sites like Altlaw.

Perhaps, the article should be called “The New “Henry Ford.” He is not tilting at wind mills.

As technology prices decrease more and more formerly expensive services are now available free or at very low costs.

We have compiled a search engine of over 750 free services that are often the equivalent of far more expensive services used, like Lexus, by professionals and millions of business people who are needlessly wasting money.

The key here is raw data. Companies like Thomson West offer this raw data enhanced with secondary material that is useful for attorneys and other researchers. These companies are not wasting money using Westlaw.com, they are getting enhancements such as headnotes, key numbers, case synopses, and added search terms – all created by West’s attorney-editors as well as notes of decisions, historical and statutory notes, cross references and library references. Free services can not match this level of quality and service.

Mr Malamud is to be congratulated and supported. I sincerely hope someone or some group will replicate what he is doing in the arena of government funded scientific research. Many pharmaceutical companies, for example, are treating taxpayer funded research results as their private property. Erectile Dysfunction medications is an egregious example of this private misappropriation of public property.

I, personally, am wasting money by paying for my lawyers’ expensive subscription to Westlaw. They don’t get it for the headnotes and case synopses. They get it so that when the other side cites 123 US 456, they can tell what the case actually says.

West has had an unjustified monopoly on this area for far too many decades. Let’s see them compete in an open market, then we’ll know just how many people their “headnotes” are worth $500 a month to.

Free software could not match proprietary software — until thousands of programmers volunteered their efforts into a commons. Now the free stuff is better for many purposes. Free encyclopedias couldn’t match the proprietary ones, until ditto. Free caselaw services will go down the same path — likely to the same result.